On Tuesday, attackers armed with rifles killed 18 people in a village just outside of Jos, in central Nigeria. The attackers are believed to be members of the mostly Muslim Fulani ethnic group, according to Reuters.
Nigeria, showing major historic tribes. Northern tribes (Fulani, Hausa) are generally Muslim, southern tribes (Yoruba, Igbo, Berom) are generally Christian.
This is presumably revenge for attacks by Christian gangs last month. According to Reuters, Christian youth gangs from the Berom ethnic group set up illegal roadblocks around Jos, stopping vehicles, and pulling out and killing people believed to be Muslims.
Violence and atrocities between Muslims and Christians are a frequent occurrence in Jos, where at least 200 people have been killed since the beginning of December.
Jos is in the middle of Nigeria, right on the fault line between Muslims who live in the north and Christians who live in the south.
The northern part of Nigeria is mostly Muslim, because of centuries of migration from the Maghreb, the region in northern Africa that was conquered by Arab Muslims in the centuries following the death of Mohammed.
The southern part of Nigeria, especially around the Port Harcourt area, is predominantly Christian, following centuries of colonization by the Europeans, taking advantage of opportunities for mining and the slave trade. Over time, many of the southern tribes were converted to Christianity.
In the middle of Nigeria is the city of Jos, heavily populated by both Muslims and Christians. There have been a number of secular confrontations in Jos over time, so the current clashes are nothing new.
A farm owner in Jos writes the following in the blog for the Niger Delta Working Group:
“The situation is actually more frightening than open fighting because every day there are silent killings of individuals, mainly youth, who go into areas of the other faith. Muslim okada riders are killed in Christian areas, and Christian youth (also mainly on motorcycles) are killed in Muslim areas. This happens both at night and during day times. There is incredible bitterness on both sides. A lot of the killing is done between youth who actually know each other and were previously friends before the crisis intervened. Everyone is afraid to move freely around the town, and most people stay in their immediate environment where they have a sense of some security.Jos town is traumatised and divided. Life in the town has been completely disrupted. Public transportation is very difficult, as Muslim drivers won’t go into Christian areas and vice versa. The same for Okada riders. People try to find out the religion of the motorcyclist before engaging them for a journey for fear of being kidnapped and killed.”
This is an example of the enormous level of mutual xenophobia that can develop between two ethnic or religious groups.
You might think that Nigeria is very close to civil war, and many people do think so, but Generational Dynamics tells us that Nigeria is actually very far from a civil war. (See “Basics of Generational Dynamics.”)
Nigeria’s last generational crisis war was the Nigerian civil war, or Biafran war, fought from 1967-69 between Muslims and Christians. The survivors of that extremely violent, bloody, genocidal war never want to see anything like it happen again. 40 years have now passed. The young post-war children are the Christian and Muslim gangs that are going out killing each other in gang fights. But as long as their parents are around, the gang fights will not take the next step into full scale civil war.
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